Shepard and other scouts and spies reported a day or two later that Jackson's army was on the Rapidan, one of the numerous Virginia rivers.

Then Dick accompanied Colonel Winchester, who was sent by rail to Washington with dispatches.
He did not find in the capital the optimism that reigned in the mind of Pope.

McClellan was withdrawing his army from Virginia, but the eyes of the nation were turned toward Pope.

Many who had taken deep thought of the times and of men, were more alarmed about Pope than he was about himself.

They did not like those jubilant dispatches from "Headquarters in the Saddle." There was ominous news that Lee himself was marching north, and that he and Jackson would soon be together.